Animation: Initial Research #1

Researching My Production

Initial Ideas

Cormorant Fishing 

My first idea was to make a sort of documentary animated film about Cormorant fishing in Japan. I found the idea when reading about the last surviving tribes and people slicking to the old ways. 

Cormorant fishing is a fishing technique using the Cormorant bird, the fisherman would tie a loose tie around the cormorants neck and the bird would proceed to catch fish, the fish unable to go down the birds throat would be caught in the birds mouth, once the bird had caught enough fish to fill its pouch it would return to the fisherman where he would dispense the fish in a basket and let the cormorant eat the smaller fish. The fisherman would have up to 5 birds on his raft to help him fish.

Lin Li

I found this process or co-dependency interesting; it had an air of fantasy about it. In fact it had sparked a few other ideas and I had researched other tribes that use animals to hunt, there was a Mongolian Falcon Hunting tribe and another mountain tribe that used horses, falcons and dogs to catch hare and other small creatures. 

However my Cormorant fishing idea was the strongest of these and I decided I would portray the traditional technique it in an East Asian in woodblock style or brush/blot ink technique. Using 2D traditional animation with minimal colour.

 

My story was going to start with the journey of a koi carp in a small lake, it was mostly abstract but it illustrated the day of a cormorant fisherman. 

It would reflect my skills in animation people and animals in a figurative sense as well as tackling animating water and ripples. 

The Shaman/Druid

I had several ideas buzzing around at the start and my second strongest was a set a bit closer to home, it was about Scottish druids. The story was fuzzy but it was a device mainly to illustrate my capabilities in animation and illustration. 

I was planning to do a lot of figurative animation of a shaman like character casting spells/curses. It was fueled by a lot of research of my previous film Out of Time. And a Scottish folk tale about a dark man-wolf creature that looked after the helpless and punished the evil/greedy. 

I was very focused on having the main shaman character being based off a bird either a harbinger of death with the metaphor that he/she can conrtol life. So that left me to choose from a raven or an owl, both omens of death

The design was fantastical of course almost witch doctor/shaman-esque with a bit of plague doctor mixed in. The other part I had to decide was if they were going to be intimidating or welcoming, or perhaps look different depending on who viewed them. 

I liked researching this idea so much that I thought I would stick in my comfort zone and develop a witch story; with Halloween so close at this time it seemed to be my calling. I developed a short story about a cat and witch; the cat collected ingredients for his witch master to enable her to make spells, charms and potions. 

(I then went through the creation progress again, sticking with the bird like features for my witch character, be then deciding against them a lot later into development)

Choosing a final production, after much research and debate, I decided I would actually like to make a show reel being as none of my ideas seemed strong enough to create a 90 second film. I went with the witch and cat story and fashioned it into scenarios that would work for a show reel; walk cycles, head turns, hand gestures etc. 

 From here I have gone on to research my final production, now shaping up to be more of a film than a show reel, so I am now going by the show reel brief as of a couple of weeks ago being as I feel it is more a long the lines of what I want to achieve with this production. 

My next update will be Initial Research #2 - the research that when into creating my current project.